Traveling Exhibition: Icons of a Border Installation

August 10, 2009 - November 26, 2009 | Colombus, OH, Omaha, NE, St. Louis, MO, Notre Dame, IN

Image from the exhibition "Icons of a Border Crossing"
(© Anton Kovaljov, Stan Stambler)

Icons of a Border Installation: Photographic Search for Traces in Today’s Berlin (Ikonen einer Grenzanlage: Fotografische Spurensuche im heutigen Berlin)

Created as part of a photography seminar, the works in this exhibition document the visible and invisible remnants of the Wall with cameras and acoustic recording devices. For this project, organizers Prof. Dr. Barbara Becker and photographer Jürgen Spiler at the Institute for Media Science, University of Paderborn, challenged students to locate forgotten wall remnants, deserted watchtowers, and still visible border strips as well as mental traces of a possible “wall in the mind.”

Since the Wall fell twenty years ago, the appearance of the capital, its everyday life

Image from the exhibition "Icons of a Border Crossing"
(© Anton Kovaljov, Stan Stambler)

and the attitudes of its citizens have changed fundamentally. Still, the Wall lives on, not only in places where material remnants of the Berlin Wall can still be viewed, but also in the self-image of the city, its residents and visitors – as an icon of the Cold War, the separation of Germany, and a symbol and commemoration of personal destinies and suffering.

Starting with historic photographs documenting the building of the Wall and texts in which the wall finds a voice, thirty-six students attempted to learn about the past. They researched where and from what perspective these photographs had been taken in order to document what remains of these historically significant sites with present-day photographs from a similar perspective. For this exhibition, the photographs generated during the search for the remnants of the Wall were mounted on fifteen panels and supplemented with texts written by the students themselves.

Organized by the Goethe-Insitut, this exhibition will travel to a number of cities in the United States throughout 2009. Please see schedule of the exhibition below.

Coordination Goethe-Institut Chicago: 

* August 10 – September 21, 2009: The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
* September 28 – October 19, 2009: University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE
* October 29 – November 16, 2009: University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO
* November 26 - December 21, 2009: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN

Goethe Institute Chicago

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